


Darwin's Theory

by Tarlan



Category: Alien Series, Alien: Resurrection (1997), Aliens (1986)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-16
Updated: 2006-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-18 16:53:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ripley remembers Dwayne Hicks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darwin's Theory

**Author's Note:**

> Set after Alien Resurrection

"We can't stay here," I say, knowing how dangerous it would be if the Earth military caught us on this desolate planet that had been the home of the human race until the Colonial Wars, just over a century earlier. Those who survived the holocaust had either abandoned Earth or moved into the few remaining cities, and those who stayed would not tolerate Auton's such as me, and would treat Ripley as a laboratory rat. However, it felt good to see the world that had birthed the human race... my creators.

I tell her it would be easy for us to disappear on a world such as this, and she smiles warmly.

"I have dreams, too," she says, as if answering a question posed moments earlier, and I recall the small conversation in the Chapel where I told her that I was not afraid to dream, as reality was far worse.

"I like my dreams. I see... a face whenever I close my eyes and let my senses drift into sleep. He's always waiting for me there. At first... nebulous, but the image sharpens with each passing day."

"A man? What does he look like?"

I watch her eyes close as she focuses inwards, and she frowns as she tries to grasp the image within her waking thoughts. A smile touches her thin lips, and that smile grows slowly.

"An angel," she whispers, almost reverently. "In my dreams he is... Gabriel, Michael... a warrior angel on the side of good against evil, holding a pulse rifle instead of a sword." Her head tilts as she studies the image she has found. "I sense the contrasts in him, or maybe they are hazy memories. Light, almost spiky hair... that's soft to my touch. Hard muscle beneath the silken, ivory flesh of his belly, and thighs and... and ass." She grins broadly at that memory before continuing. "Intense green eyes that melt into passion-sated tenderness. And his mouth..." Her fingers drift up to caress her still smiling lips.

"His mouth?" I prompt, as almost a minute passes in silence. Her smile twitches as she drags one finger over her bottom lip.

"Soft yet firm... and swollen from desperate kisses. My kisses."

While she is speaking, I access the memories stored from my plunder of 'Father' on the USM Auriga, pausing only as she gives a wry expression at her poetic description of this ghost from her inherited memories; I smile in response. My thoughts center on her distant past, two hundred years ago, seeking the mission data from LV-426 as I am convinced he is a soldier, a United Space Colonial Marine. Several images, with accompanying data, flow across my mind's eye. Gorman, Drake, Hudson... all had pale skin but blue eyes, not green. Only one of the marines had green eyes.

"Hicks, Corporal-"

I was about to quote his serial number when Ripley whispered softly, "Dwayne."

I gasped as this strange conversation added a new twist to the data I had taken from the Auriga. Wren and Gediman had not known, or they had discarded this possibility when they pondered over the third set of DNA within their clone. With so many markers identical to Ripley's DNA, they had decided it could simply be an abnormality caused by the hybrid alien/human sample but I had a new theory now. All the tiny pieces were beginning to fall into place, forming a new picture. The third set of DNA had been inside her, a part of her.

Ripley had been pregnant at the time of her death.

It was possible for blood from the fetus to cross the placenta into the mother's bloodstream. This was not so common in a first pregnancy; however, this would not have been Ripley's first child. Her daughter had died of old age while Ripley slept away the years following her escape from the Nostromo. I knew it would take time to verify that the third set of DNA had markers in common with Corporal Dwayne Hicks, but I felt an intuitive leap in my programming that was almost human in nature. The scientists on the Auriga had deemed the exploration of this data an unnecessary waste of resources. As far as they were concerned, as long as the additional DNA was human, then it was of little consequence whose DNA it was when all they wanted was to extract the Alien's DNA.

I thought of the alien/human baby that had managed to get on-board the Betty. The dominant Alien DNA had governed its basic appearance and predatory instincts but the inherited genetic memory imprint had not recognized the Alien Queen as its mother. Instead, it had homed in on the pheromones from the mostly human part of the clone - Ripley.

With new insight, I knew the creature was Ellen Ripley's baby, formed from a single moment of passion with Dwayne Hicks during the terrifying events on LV-426. It was created by the strongest and most basic human survival instinct - once the fight or flight response had been subdued during moments of intense danger - the urge to procreate, to pass on the male's genes in the hope that some part of him would live on.

I recalled those last moments in the cargo bay on the Betty and how it had killed Distephano without a second thought and yet, I had intrigued it.

Had it sensed the lack of humanity in me? Or had it scented Ripley's pheromones upon me from where we had stayed close during those final moments before an Alien pulled her beneath the corridor floor and into the nest? Would it have reacted to Johner with equal curiosity, scenting Ripley upon him from the game she had played with him, pressing up against him as she teased him with the basketball?

Distephano had kept his distance from Ripley and, perhaps, he had paid the ultimate price for his fear of her.

In the cargo bay, I recall seeing Ripley reach for the inhuman baby, breathing in its scent and caressing its almost human face. Until then, she had displayed little emotion beyond an almost cruel humor but, at that moment, I recognized her pain, watching the tears roll down her cheeks as the monstrous child was sucked into the vacuum of space.

Had she sensed herself within the newborn... or had she recognized his scent within it? Her lover... Dwayne Hicks.

Another thought struck me. The Alien Queen had been born pregnant. She had laid her first batch of eggs within days of her birth while the alien/human hybrid fetus grew in the unknown, almost human reproductive organs that had been an unwelcome gift from the human DNA.

What of Ripley? She shared DNA with the Alien Queen and certainly displayed other Alien traits. Could she share this trait too?

"Ripley?" She turns to face me, with her head tilted on an angle again, questioningly. "I need to run a test on you."

Her lips purse but I can see she is curious to know what I am planning. I lead her back on-board the Betty to the pathetic medical bay and wait as she lies down without a murmur. She watches me, intently, as I patch into the scanner's computer system.

One hand reaches to touch the scar that runs between her breasts. "I don't have one of them inside me."

I know she is referring to the Aliens, but this is different.

The hum of the bio-scanner fills the air around us as I focus it upon her lower abdomen - and freeze. My eyes flick to hers, noticing she is watching me rather than the image on the screen. Internally, I direct the scanner to zoom in and I glance significantly towards the screen, knowing her dark eyes will follow in that direction.

I hear no sharp intake of breath as she sees the rapidly growing fetus. In reality, it is but a week or two old and yet it looks more like a three-month-old fetus. I realize the accelerated growth of the Alien species has affected Ripley's biological makeup, and has affected the child she carries too. Already, I can see it will take on human form outwardly but, internally, there are differences visible to a discerning eye such as mine, and psychologically, who knows what instincts and traits it would be born with. After all, its parentage boasted a predatory Alien, a professional soldier, and a woman with strong survival instincts.

He, not it, I add silently as I note the genitalia.

"We can't stay on this shithole," came a male voice, and I watch as Johner picks his way across the debris in the small medical bay to join us.

He's an asshole... and yet I feel a strange sense of belonging, of family, with him and Vriess. We have faced almost certain death together, learning to appreciate each other's strengths and weaknesses over the course of a few hours. He may still be an asshole but we found strength in unity.

"Vriess reckons he can get the Betty flying, but he needs someone good with computers..." He stares at me for several seconds before turning to Ripley, "...and we need a pilot."

I smile. Johner was never one to mince words, letting us know our worth to him up front. Like Ripley, he had few social graces, though she had the excuse of being barely a week old, and with a lifetime ahead of her to learn, whereas he would never learn to deal with people at that level. Still, I could appreciate his motivations and his survival instincts. They had carried him from the squalor of Earth's overcrowded cities, scarred both mentally and physically... but at least I knew where I stood with Johner.

I thought of the lost crew of the Betty. Of Elgyn, who had known a terrible fate awaited the unfortunate people we had intercepted and then abducted from the transport. Elgyn had promised the transport contained only condemned prisoners, who would die anyway, but the unfortunate Purvis had revealed the truth. Just a simple man on his way to work on one of the mining colonies. Not a murderer, a thief, or a pirate. Just an ordinary man who had never deserved to become a host for Alien offspring.

Then I thought of the acid-scarred Christie, lying in a drugged-induced sleep in his quarters onboard the Betty.

Had he and Hillard known of Elgyn's despicable deal with General Perez? It seemed divine justice that Elgyn should meet his end at the hands of an Alien, though I still felt sadness at his and Hillard's loss. But then, they programmed me that way.

How Christie had survived the fall into the submerged kitchen and clawed his way to the surface was beyond comprehension but, somehow, he had made it back to the Betty without attracting an Alien, and had collapsed on-board. His comatose body had remained hidden until Ripley insisted on an internal sensor probe for lifeforms only moments after we landed here on Earth - just in case another of the Alien's had managed to get on-board. After all, her inherited memories showed that it had happened twice before... three times, if I count the Alien baby that killed Distephano.

Johner leaned over and stared at the screen, his battle-scarred face looking grim as he traced the outline of the fetus with one thick, grubby finger.

"One of them?"

"It's no more alien than she is," I replied. "She's pregnant."

His thick eyebrows rose an inch above incredibly bright, blue eyes. Strange how I had never noticed human characteristics before now, seeing them as irrelevant beyond identification of an individual, but this talk of angels, of human aesthetics, had brought new programming to the fore.

Was I beautiful? Was Johner beautiful? Certainly, Ripley seemed to believe Hicks had been beautiful. Mentally, I compared the image of his face to Johner's, seeing symmetry in Hick's features and a softer line of jaw and cheek and brow. I transposed his face upon the images of male angels from the paintings of Michelangelo and others of renown.

Yes. Hicks had been angelically beautiful. Strong of features and body, with his record showing he had far greater intelligence than the usual 'grunt'. With a better education, or a finer start in life, he could have been an officer.

"Those repairs won't make themselves."

I nod as Johner's impatience makes itself known, and unhook myself from the scanning computer. Johner is right. Vriess needed my assistance, and without it, we would be at the mercy of the remaining Earth military. We do need to get off this planet if we are to survive.

****

 **Epilogue:**

The Alien DNA ensured rapid growth so none of us was surprised when Ripley went into labor far shorter than the normal nine months for an ordinary human. Towards the end, I monitored her daily, grateful that my earlier assessment had remained true, with the baby retaining mostly human form.

He was born with teeth - sharp teeth - and a shock of blond hair.

Within three months, he reached early adulthood, and it is easy to see where his dominant genes lie for he is the spitting image of Dwayne Hicks, right down to the tiny cleft in his lower lip and those intense, green eyes. He retains many of Hicks memories too, inherited from the genetic material that formed him, but he also has memories from the Alien Queen and from Ripley.

I ponder on the miracle of his being.

They created Ripley in a laboratory, laboriously separating her DNA from the Alien Queen's and, to an extent, from Hicks too, whereas, this clone of Dwayne Hicks has come about naturally and, for the greater part, dominating the other DNA that blended with his. However, Ripley and the Alien Queen have given him many biological gifts that could prove to be a benefit or a curse.

Yet he is the proof of Darwin's Theory - Survival of the fittest - showing that humanity can go up against the Alien... and survive.

From across the room, I smile as Ripley greets this man-child, who was once her lover of a single moment in time. Her Alien makeup comes to the fore as she breathes in his scent deeply while she nuzzles his face and neck, and I see his answering response as, from his soft lips, I hear the tiny whimper that is so reminiscent of the monstrous alien baby Ripley had been forced to kill on the Betty.

Against all the odds, the others on-board the Betty had gone beyond fear to simple acceptance of this new hybrid lifeform.

Johner adores him, for Dwayne is as fast and as skillful as the alien/human hybrid who birthed him, and perhaps even more dangerous than Ripley, but without the mindless, predatory streak of his Alien Queen blood. Vriess adores him because he is a fast learner, quickly assimilating knowledge on how to keep the Betty in top running order, and strong enough to cope with the hardest and heaviest of tasks. Christie adores him because he is a naturally gifted pilot, just like his 'mother', able to handle the Betty as if she is an extension of himself.

And I adore him, because he is an angel... and because he proves there is more to being human than mere genetics, for that makes me feel a part of this strange family, created through adversity, a bond even stronger than love.

THE END


End file.
